“Mr. Watson – Come Here – I Want to See You”

If you read the above title and are wondering what the hell that has to do with anything, you’re probably not alone.

No, those words aren’t from a Sherlock Holmes mystery.

Actually, they are some of the first words ever spoken on a telephone.  Alexander Graham Bell was talking to his assistant, Thomas Watson.  They weren’t really in reference to anything.  Bell was just attempting some early telephone humor, using his new invention to summon his assistant to come speak to him in person.

Ever since the first sci-fi geek, our inventions have been (fittingly) paying homage to their science fiction predecessors.  In honor of the news this week about the MIT guys who honored their geek roots (more on that later), here are some of them:

PADD from TNG (Paramount)

The PADD

On Star Trek: The Next Generation, crew members on the Enterprise are sometimes seen carrying around a portable tablet computer known as a PADD (Personal Access Display Device).  Little did Wil Wheaton know that in the 21st century, geeks (and unfortunately hipsters) all over planet Earth would be carrying around a similar device known as an iPad.  I’m not sure if Steve Jobs chose the name based, at least in part, on the Star Trek device, or if the PADD’s on Star Trek had Apple logos on the back.

The Nautilus

Okay, this one’s almost cheating.  In 1870, Jules Verne’s novel Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea was published, followed in 1874 by The Mysterious Island.  In these novels, Captain Nemo’s submarine is named The Nautilus.  Verne named it after Robert Fulton’s circa-1800 submarine, which is why I it’s almost cheating.  In 1954, the United States Navy launched the first nuclear submarine, the USS Nautilus.  The name was a tribute to the work of both Verne and Fulton. So the US Navy paid homage to a sci-fi submarine that paid homage to a real submarine.

Geordi La Forge and his VISOR (Paramount)

The VISOR

Another well-known device from Star Trek: The Next Generation was Geordi La Forge’s VISOR (Visual Implant and Sensory Organ Replacement).  This device allowed Geordi to overcome being born blind, as well as having some other nifty features that were revealed over time.  The folks at MIT have developed retinal implants that could be hooked up to a device like this, but the project is not in the human testing phase yet.  Fortunately, some geeks with a sense of heritage at Enhanced Vision have developed the JORDY (Joint Optic Reflexive Display).  I guess the spelling is close enough, as far as acronyms go.  The JORDY is a battery-powered head-worn device similar to Geordi’s VISOR that allows people with low visual acuity to see better.  Like the VISOR, the JORDY has several additional features, though I don’t think they include emitting hypersonic or sub-space field pulses.  But who knows?

“Help me Obi-Wan Kenobi.  You’re my only hope.”

The latest news in the “real-life tech imitates sci-fi art” department is that some guys at MIT have managed to send holographic images over the internet, which is usually used to send pornographic images instead.  These guys at MIT were no slouches in the geek culture department.  Their first use of the technology was to have someone dressed up like Princess Leia act out her plea from the above video clip.

Unfortunately, the quality of the hologram isn’t quite up to the tech level of Star Wars yet.  The technology was pretty advanced a long time ago in a galaxy far away.  At least it serves to mask the Leia impersonator’s bad acting.

One of the most impressive things about this achievement is that it was accomplished with one hacked version of the Microsoft Kinect.  Now, they just need to figure out a way to implant the hologram into one of these guys: